The Image of the Black in Western Art

In the 1960s, as a response to segregation in the United States, the influential art patron Dominique de Menil began a research project and photo archive called The Image of the Black in Western Art. Now, fifty years later, as the first American president of African American descent serves his historic term in office, her mission has been re-invigorated through the collaboration of Harvard University Press and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research to present new editions of the coveted five original books, as well as an additional five volumes.

Below is a list of in-print works in this collection, presented in series order or publication order as applicable.

The new edition of From the Pharaohs to the Fall of the Roman Empire offers a comprehensive look at the fascinating and controversial subject of the representation of black people in the ancient world. Classic essays by distinguished scholars are aptly contextualized by Jeremy Tanner’s new introduction, which guides the reader through enormous changes in the field in the wake of the “Black Athena” story.

From the Demonic Threat to the Incarnation of Sainthood, written largely by noted French scholar Jean Devisse, has established itself as a classic in the field of medieval art. It surveys as never before the presence of black people, mainly mythical, in art from the early Christian era to the fourteenth century. The extraordinary transformation of Saint Maurice into a black African saint, the subject of many noble and deeply touching images, is a highlight of this volume. The new introduction by Paul Kaplan provides a fresh perspective on the image of the black in medieval European art and contextualizes the classic essays on the subject.

Africans in the Christian Ordinance of the World, written by a small team of French scholars, has established itself as a classic in the field of medieval art. The most striking development in this period was the gradual emergence of the black Magus, invariably a figure of great dignity, in the many representations of the Adoration of the Magi by the greatest masters of the time. The new introduction by Paul Kaplan provides a fresh perspective on the image of the black in medieval European art and contextualizes the classic essays on the subject.

The much-awaited Artists of the Renaissance and Baroque has been written by an international team of distinguished scholars, and covers the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The rise of slavery and the presence of black people in Europe irrevocably affected the works of the best artists of the time. Essays on the black Magus and the image of the black in Italy, Spain, and Britain, with detailed studies of Rembrandt and Heliodorus’s Aethiopica, all presented with superb color plates, make this new volume a worthy addition to this classic series.

Europe and the World Beyond focuses geographically on peoples of South America and the Mediterranean as well as Africa, but conceptually it emphasizes the ways that visual constructions of blacks mediated between Europe and a faraway African continent that was impinging ever more closely on daily life in cities and ports engaged in the slave trade.

The Eighteenth Century features a rich collection of images of Africans representing slavery’s apogee and the beginnings of abolition. Old visual tropes of a master with adoring black slave gave way to depictions of Africans as victims and individuals, while at the same time the intellectual foundations of scientific racism were established.

Slaves and Liberators looks at the political implications of the representation of Africans, from the morality of slavery, through abolitionism, to European imperialism in Africa. Popular imagery and great works, like Turner’s Slave Ship, cast light on widely differing European responses to Africans and their descendants.

Black Models and White Myths examines the racial assumptions behind representations of Africans that emphasized the contrast between “civilization” and “savagery” and the development of so-called scientific and ethnographic racism. These works often depicted Africans’ allegedly natural behavior as a counterpoint to inhibited European conduct.

The Impact of Africa looks at changes in Western perspectives on African art and representations of Africans, and their paradoxical interpretation as both primitive and modern. Topics include photography, African influences on Picasso and Josephine Baker, and the contribution of artists from the Caribbean and Latin American diasporas.

The last volume in The Image of the Black in Western Art marks a shift by focusing on representation of blacks by black artists in the West. It takes on migration in the U.S and globalization, Négritude and cultural hybridity, black artists’ relationship with European traditions and experimentation, as well as photography, jazz and activism.

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